Right Hand Life: Hello River System!

As I’ve mentioned before, cruising isn’t always rainbows and dolphins! Sometimes it’s sewage and electrified waterways😩

On September 6, we left Lake Michigan, and entered the river system. Most people can enter the Illinois River by following a very beautiful and scenic route (blue line) through downtown Chicago. However, there is a fixed bridge that only has a 17 foot clearance, which we definitely could not get under, on that route. So we were resigned to using (red line) the ‘Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.’ The history of this canal states, “The chief purpose of the canal, conceived in 1885, was to reverse the flow of the Chicago River away from Lake Michigan in order to halt pollution of the lake waters by the city’s sewage” (online Britannia).

If you know me…you probably know that I am a little naïve! I read these descriptions, while planning our trip, and thought, “oh how lucky we are not to live in the 1880’s when they used a canal to discharge sewage from a major city…yuck…disgusting…unbelievable…thank goodness we live in a more civilized century!”

Unfortunately, I learned that times have not changed much! Also, you will notice that the two routes merge so ultimately everyone is traveling in the same water.

Ahhh, what pretty waterfalls…ugh…what is that terrible smell??? Ohhhh, those waterfall areas are sewage ‘treatment’ (I use that term lightly) discharge points🤢. We passed several of these discharge points in this canal.

There are a lot of warnings about the hazards of touching this ‘water’ (I use that term lightly)! In addition to the sewage contamination, there is an area that has been electrified to stop the invasive Asian Carp from getting into the Great Lakes…which is a fabulous idea, just a little creepy to travel through!

This was our drumroll moment, this fixed bridge is advertised to have a 19 foot clearance. We measured precisely (with fuel and water tanks full) and found that Righr Hand’s highest point I’d 18’ 4” above the water😬. That is certainly less clearance than we would prefer, but we were fully prepared to remove our hard top if necessary (which required a lot of planning and the procurement of tools and supplies. On this particular day, a towboat captain told us the clearance was 19’ 6”…yippeee…we made it under without any additional work!

There are a lot of materials being moved along this stretch of the river. We passed huge mounds of sand, gravel, wood chips…etc,

But what the heck is this!! No photoshop color tampering has been done to this picture, this is the actual color of this substance🤷🏼‍♀️

There has been a lot of radio chatter about a man named Mike, who was completing the Loop on a jet ski, coming our way. We were watching for him when he passed us on the Illinois River. He completed the Great Loop in three months!

Personally, I have been disgusted by the water quality in the area, but the eagles don’t seem to mind. Clearly, they are thriving here…in fact, we saw over 100 eagles on this stretch of river, more than we have ever seen in our 27,000 miles of cruising!

Oh…that’s where all of the channel markers have gotten to…maybe a huge beaver is collecting them😉

We usually try to avoid running with a pack of boats, but in this location a dredging operation had the lock hold boats so we could all pass through together.

The river levels have been very low, which contributed to an ‘INCIDENT’ where Right Hand ran aground HARD! I was at the helm, and was attempting to pass a tow with many barges. I radioed the captain of the towboat, and he told me to “come ahead on the two”. This means that he wants me to pass him so that his vessel is on my starboard side. The channel was fairly narrow, and the water depth was only 10 feet. As I started past I could feel that we were being dragged over toward the barges. I turned the wheel hard to port and was still being pulled sideways toward the barge (this is where I considered aborting my attempt, but didn’t feel that was a safe option either) so I increased throttle (kinda/maybe to full) until I started to pull away, and just as I broke lose from his suction and started making headway past him…it happened! I felt a little bump, then the bow came out of the water like a submarine surfacing in a WWII movie😖. Poor Keith happened to be visiting the head (restroom) at that moment…oops!

Thankfully, it was very soft mud, and we were able to get off the bottom on our own, and with no damage (other than my pride). While the charts indicated that we were within the boundaries of the channel, the lower water levels and the narrowness of the channel created a situation where the tow was actually sucking water out from under us…while I was simultaneous making my boat ride lower by increasing the throttle (we do not get up on plane😉).

Next stop, Peoria…

We anchored off Peoria, and took the Whaler to the other side of the river where a Walmart was right along the waterway. The problem was that the embankment was very steep, which didn’t stop us from getting there…but made carrying groceries down a treacherous proposition. No worries, we always have rope handy (when it is tied to a boat it is called line…if not, it’s rope) and we are always in ‘problems solving’ mode.

Much more efficient, and safer too!

We spent one night tied to this old/abandoned lock wall…that is now part of a ‘marina’.

The locks on the Mississippi River are HUGE! This picture was taken when we were already 1/3 of the way in😳

Keith calculated that this lock released 20,644,800 gallons of water in order to lower us 23 feet…amazing!

We were shocked to find this as ‘common practice’ for dredging the Mississippi. They simply dig down and shoot the spoils back into the current, to be carried down the river. This definitely looks like job security for the dredging industry!

Sometimes the Mississippi can be an intimidating place to find a safe anchorage, but this little (relatively speaking) lock (right off the Mississippi River) is happy to let boats tie up for the night!